With continuously increasing use of oil transports, the danger of environmental contamination by oil liberated from tank trucks, rail tank cars and tank ships (tankers) has also increased. Because of oil-release catastrophes only in the last several years, entire stretches of coastlines have been contaminated and life in the water and contaminated regions has been completely destroyed.
There have been many efforts to obviate these drawbacks, for example, by pumping the oil from the water or ground surface, to neutralize oil and oil like substances by supplying a variety of materials thereon, and in similar ways to remove the oil or render it less pernicious.
From French Patent 2,646,189, for example, it is known to blow hydrophobized mineral fibers onto the water surface to allow these fibers to pick up the oil or oil like substances, and to remove the fibers and thus the picked up oil.
The mixture of fibers and oil can be stored and disposed of. The fibers are relatively short and can be hydrophobized by treatment with a silicone oil.
The amount of silicone oil added to the fibers is about 0.5 to 3%.
A disadvantage of this known process is that the relatively short mineral fibers tend to sink when they do not come into contact with the oil sufficiently quickly. As a result, a portion of the mineral fiber material blown onto the surface is lost before it can become effective. The contamination of the seabed or the ground by such unused fibers is significant.
French Patent 2,401,214 also discloses the pickup of oil by mineral fibers in which the mineral fibers are previously impregnated with a binder. This process has many of the same drawbacks as that of French Patent 2,646,189.
The British Patent 1,235,463 discloses a process in which oil lying upon a water surface can be picked up by inorganic fibers, the fibers having previously been treated with a water blocking material. The fibers float on the water and come into contact with and then store the oil by adhesion of the oil to surfaces of the fibers.
The oil is disposed of by combustion of the fibers. Because of the fact that the oil picked up by the fibers cannot be burned simply and efficiently, this system gives rise to a significant environmental contamination by the release of noxious, toxic or noisome materials into the environment.
It should also be noted that the earlier systems described, whereby materials are supplied on the surfaces of the water and then removed along with the oil or oil like substances, do not achieve the high levels of oil removal desired. Furthermore, these systems do not permit the oil to be rapidly and reliably removed from the water for intervening storage. The recovery of the fibers after separation of the oil therefrom is costly and there is always the drawback that a part of the fibers sink in the water or for other reasons, cannot be recovered.